For computers with newer Nvidia or Intel graphics cards, ProShow 9 has a new hardware accelerated encoding option for many MPEG-4 video output formats. Hardware acceleration moves the video encoding from the CPU to the GPU, allowing the CPU to focus on the actual rendering of the frames. This usually results in a significant improvement in rendering speed. This option will be especially helpful for those with a slower CPU with less cores.
This option can be found in the following publishing formats:
- Video For Web, Devices, and Computers (Not available for all presets)
- USB Flash Drive
- Vimeo
- YouTube
- Smugmug
Intel Integrated GPUs
A compatible Intel CPU is necessary and a display typically needs to be connected to the Intel video output on the motherboard or laptop. Using an Intel GPU with a separate graphics card may prevent this option from being available. See this list for all supported CPUs.
Nvidia GPUs
Although a direct list of cards is not available through Nvidia’s site, this page that may be helpful in determining if your GPU supports hardware accelerated encoding.
AMD graphics cards are not supported at this time.
Drivers
Drivers must be relatively up to date for this feature to be available in ProShow. Older drivers may result in a message that says “This system’s GPU or the current driver does not support accelerated encoding.” Please see your graphics card manufacturer’s website for the latest driver downloads.
Limitations
An important note about hardware encoding is that ProShow relies on the capabilities that are hardcoded into the graphics card itself. The resultant videos may not be as optimized in terms of the size-to-quality ratio as they would with the software encoder. This is more true for videos created with Intel GPUs than with those created from Nvidia GPUs. For most users, this tradeoff should be fine, but if achieving the smallest file size is important, you may want to uncheck the acceleration option prior to creating your video. Additionally, the limitations of the GPU’s hardware encoder mean that this option isn’t available for all formats.